TWO FROM UBER-TEXAN MOLLY IVINS

Exhaustion claims my brain. Instead, read these two Molly Ivins essays from Working For Change.

Flim-flam and hoo-hah

Everybody and his dog in the political commentating trade now agrees the Bush administration is experiencing hard times -- the going is getting tough, and Bush is getting testy. Bush always gets testy under stress. This is not news.

It seems to me what we are looking at was put best by noted journalist Billy Don Moyers, formerly of Marshall, Texas, who was home last week and observed that the Republican right came to Washington to start a revolution and stayed to run a racket. It has become a game of ideological flim-flam, a scam in which all manner of distracting hoo-hah -- abortion, judicial activism, even "the war on terra" -- is used to obscure the fact that the government has been taken over by people who are using it to make money for themselves and their friends.

Click here for the rest.

The unification of church and state

Miers sometimes took women judicial candidates through her very prestigious firm Liddell, Sapp for the obligatory meet 'n' greet and even donated to Democratic candidates. Both these behaviors were well within the conventions of Dallas city and judicial politics, particularly in the 1980s. Dallas city politics are nonpartisan, and rather like Texas tea ("sweet or un?") come in only two flavors -- Establishment or less Establishment. Miers qualifies as ur-Establishment, despite "being a girl," as few of the old dinosaurs still put it. The slightly feminist tinge to her credentials is a plus, but she is quite definitely anti-abortion.

She ran for city council in 1989 as a moderate, but struggled during her interview with the lesbian/gay coalition. (At the time, it would have been considered progressive to even show up.) The Dallas Police Department did not then hire gays or lesbians, and when asked about the policy, Miers replied the department should hire the best-qualified people, the classic political sidestep answer.

When pressed, she said she did believe one should be able to legally discriminate against gays, and it is the recollection of two of the organization's officers that the response involved her religious beliefs.

Miers' church states on its website that it believes in biblical inerrancy, full immersion baptism, original sin and salvation dependent entirely upon accepting Jesus Christ. Everyone else is going to hell.

Click here for the rest.

Hopefully, I'll get some rest tonight, and be back tomorrow with cat blogging, and maybe some witty commentary.

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